Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXM6SB18BXHG0JG01CE6YN

Rory kept her bike on the path and walked the last stretch with it, tyres whispering over gravel. Richmond Park lay behind her in patches of black, the city’s amber glow smeared low on the horizon. The grove’s boundary never looked like a boundary from a distance. It looked like a bad idea. The standing stones waited between the oaks, pale ribs in the dark. Somebody had wrapped old fabric around one of them, strips that hung limp and damp. The air tasted of wet leaves and penny metal. Rory stopped at the first stone and pushed her hair back behind her ear. Her breath came out in short clouds. “Alright,” she muttered. “Quick in, quick out. Find the bloody thing. Go home.” The Heartstone pendant warmed against her chest like a hand left too long on a kettle. The deep crimson gem carried its own faint glow under her coat, a dim ember that didn’t match the moonlight. She tugged the silver chain free and let it rest above her collarbone. The warmth pulsed. Rory shifted her weight. The crescent scar on her left wrist flashed pale when she checked her watch. The second hand stuttered, tick-tick—pause—tick, as if it listened for permission. “Don’t start doing that now.” She stepped between the stones. The park sounds died as if someone shut a door. No distant road hush, no fox bark, no night-bird chatter. Only her boots on soil and the quiet scrape of the bike as she wheeled it into the clearing. Wildflowers covered the ground. In February. Their heads tilted up, pale and open, catching moonlight like a crowd of small faces. A smell rose from them—sweet at first, then something underneath, a note like bruised fruit. Rory let the bike fall on its side. “Eva, you better have been taking the piss,” she whispered, as if saying it louder might invite the grove to reply. She pulled her phone from her pocket and flicked the screen on. No service. The clock read 02:17. She tapped it. The display blinked and jumped to 18:04. Then back to 02:17. Rory pocketed the phone and lifted the pendant again. The gem’s glow thickened, as if the dark had weight and it pushed through it. “Hel portal,” she breathed. The words sounded wrong in her mouth. Too myth-book. Too late-night pint talk with people who made jokes about curses until something in a doorway stopped feeling like a joke. The warmth beat once against her skin. Once, then a pause, then a faster rhythm. Like a pulse that didn’t belong to her. Rory turned in a slow circle. The grove opened wider than it looked from outside, a clearing with trees set back in a neat ring, trunks dark and straight like pillars. The standing stones continued around the edge in a broken pattern, some half-swallowed by moss, some clean as bone. Moonlight pooled in the centre. The flowers glimmered. No wind touched the oaks. The leaves didn’t move. The strips of fabric on the nearest stone didn’t stir. Rory swallowed and walked in, boots pressing flowers down. The petals sprang back behind her, too quick, too eager. “Alright, whoever left me this,” she murmured to the pendant, “you couldn’t have left a map as well?” She stopped again, tilted her head. A sound threaded through the silence—faint, thin, like someone rubbing a wet finger along the rim of a glass. It came from somewhere left of her, near the far stones. Rory held her breath. The sound stopped. She took another step. It started again, closer, then warped into something else: a child’s humming, low and out of tune. Not a tune she knew. Not even a proper melody. It rose and fell on half-notes as if it searched for the place the song should land and missed each time. Rory’s throat tightened. “Nope,” she whispered. The word came out flat. “Absolutely not.” She turned towards the stones, forcing her feet to move. She kept the pendant in her hand like a torch. The gem’s glow tugged her gaze forward. The humming slipped away, replaced by a soft clack. Rory stopped. She looked down. A small stone sat in the flowers near her boot, clean and pale. It hadn’t been there a second ago. She scanned the ground ahead. The flowers looked untouched, as if nothing had thrown it. She kicked it aside. It rolled and vanished into the colour like it sank. Another clack sounded behind her. Rory didn’t turn straight away. She kept her eyes ahead, forced her shoulders to stay loose. Her palm sweated around the pendant. “Who’s there?” Her voice sounded too loud in the cleared air, like it bounced off invisible walls. Silence. She turned. The grove stayed the same. Stones. Trees. Flowers. Her bike lay on its side near the boundary, black shape half-hidden in bloom. The pendant warmed again, harder now, the heat pricking her skin. Rory looked down at it. The crimson gem glowed from within, deeper than before. The humming returned, right at her ear. Rory jerked back, swinging her elbow through empty air. Her heart hammered in her ribs. “Don’t do that.” She spun, scanning, shoulders up, ready to run. Nothing stood near her. No figure. No movement. The sound had nowhere to come from. She pressed her fingertips against her ear. Cold skin. No breath. No touch. “Alright,” she muttered. “Sound travels. Echoes. Weird acoustics. That’s a thing.” Her voice sounded like someone else’s voice the moment it left her lips, a fraction too slow to match her mouth. She snapped her jaw shut. She didn’t speak again for a few seconds. The pendant’s warmth pulled her forward, an insistence. Rory followed it, step by step, deeper into the centre. The flowers brushed her ankles, wet enough to soak through her socks. Their scent thickened as she walked, sweet rot under sugar. A faint line cut across the clearing, a seam in the air. Rory noticed it only when she reached the right angle—moonlight bent over it, as if the space itself creased. The pendant burned in her palm. Rory lifted it and held it towards the seam. The gem flared brighter, crimson like a coal turned in a fire. The seam shivered. Rory’s stomach twisted. She leaned closer, eyes narrowed. The seam looked like heat haze. Like a pane of glass with breath fogging it from the other side. She could make out shapes behind it, dark on dark. Not trees. Not stones. Something longer. Something that moved without moving, like a shadow at the bottom of deep water. Rory’s mouth went dry. “Right,” she whispered. “So that’s you.” The air carried another sound then, soft and wet. A slow inhale. Not hers. Rory stepped back. Her boot scraped something hard. She looked down and saw another stone—no, not a stone. A small piece of antler, cleanly cut, its end polished like it had been handled a lot. It lay among the flowers like an offering. Her gaze flicked up to the standing stones. The fabric strips hung in the same place. One of them looked darker than before, as if it absorbed light. Rory stared at it until her eyes watered. The strip moved. Not with wind. It drew itself tight, twisting, like a muscle flexing. Then it relaxed and drooped again. Rory’s chest rose and fell fast. “Stop it,” she said, and hated how small her voice sounded. The seam in the air rippled. Something knocked against the inside of it. A dull bump, like a fist pressed into a door. Rory backed away another step. The pendant burned. The chain bit into her fingers. She fumbled for her phone again and pulled it out, thumb jabbing the screen awake. The clock read 02:17. The seconds didn’t move at all. Rory held the phone up and hit record, then angled it at the seam. The screen showed only flowers and moonlight. No crease. No shimmer. Nothing. “Of course,” she muttered. Her laugh came out in a sharp burst that ended too fast. Another bump pressed against the seam. The air bulged outward, like skin over bone. Rory’s breath caught. A shape pushed through. Not fully. Not even a hand. Just a point, like the tip of a finger under a sheet, tracing the barrier. The air dimpled and slid under that pressure. The pendant’s glow pulsed in time with it. Rory clenched her jaw until her teeth ached. She tightened her grip on the Heartstone and lifted it higher, heat licking her palm. “Listen,” she said. Her voice held steadier than she felt. “I didn’t come here to open anything.” The air warped again. A whisper threaded into the grove, layered over itself. Not a word. More like the sound of someone speaking through water, the consonants softened and stretched. It curled around her name without saying it. Rory’s shoulders prickled. “No,” she answered anyway. “No deals. No favours. You can sod off.” The flowers nearest the seam bowed, not away from it, but towards it, as if they leaned to listen. Their stems bent without breaking, moving in a slow, smooth wave. Rory took another step back and bumped into something that hadn’t stood there a moment ago. She froze. A standing stone pressed against her shoulder blade, cold through her coat, its surface too smooth. The stones had sat metres away when she walked in. This one rose right behind her, blocking her retreat, its pale face filling her peripheral vision. Rory didn’t turn her head. She slid sideways, shoulder scraping stone, and found more resistance. Another stone. Another. The ring of them sat closer now, crowding inward without a sound. Her pulse hammered in her throat. She lifted the pendant until it hovered near her lips, as if it could hear her better. “Alright,” she breathed. “You want this? You can’t have it.” The seam in the air swelled again. A stronger push. The barrier creased outward like a bruise forming. The humming returned, not at her ear this time, but all around, inside the trees, in the flowers, under her boots. It rose in volume, still out of tune, still searching for a note that didn’t exist. Rory shut her eyes for a heartbeat and opened them again. The grove looked sharper, colours too clean. The wildflowers’ petals caught moonlight like thin skin. Their centres looked darker now, like pupils. The nearest stone’s fabric strip tightened again, twisting, twisting, until the cloth looked like a cord. It lifted itself and pointed towards Rory’s hand. Rory’s fingers cramped around the pendant. “Touch me and I’ll smash it,” she snapped, voice cracking on the last word. The humming cut out. Silence dropped hard enough to hurt. A new sound slipped in—soft footsteps in flowers, the faint wet press of something barefoot moving towards her from behind the stones. Rory held still, pendant raised, phone forgotten in her other hand, its screen casting a cold rectangle of light over her knuckles. The footsteps stopped just out of sight. A breath brushed the back of her neck, cool and patient, as if it had all night.